In yesterday's post I looked at what goes on inside your camera when you take photos in RAW format compared to JPG and suggested a couple of reasons why you might want to use RAW in some circumstances.

Today I'll look at a practical example of the benefits of RAW using the photo of a swan below... This is the photo as is came out of the camera shooting in RAW+JPG mode. It's a fairly average photo of a swan. The composition and focus are pretty good and the pose of the swan against the pleasing texture of the water gives it potential but it just doesn't really grab your attention.

This is the JPG from the camera so, as we learned yesterday, the camera has used its inbuilt presets, which are designed to give adequate results over the whole range of different conditions, to come out with a fairly average image.
The subject is a bit underexposed and the colours are all just a bit midrange and dull (click on the image to if you'd like to see a bigger version).
Had I taken this photo in JPG only mode, I could either just accept the processing the camera has done and send it off to the printers or I could spend a fair bit of time in Photoshop trying to improve the contrast, white balance and colour range using a combination of adjustment layers to come up with a version that looks a bit better.

However, since I have the RAW version of the photo, I have the option to process the raw data from the camera's sensor however I see fit. If you're familiar with film photography, it's helpful to think of the RAW file as the negative and the JPG file as a print of that negative. The RAW file, like the negative, represents what the camera saw at the time of taking the photo and the JPG file, like the print, represents a processed version of the image.
In the film case you can either rely on the photo lab to make appropriate decisions about how to convert the negative into an image on paper (usually a standard process that is adequate in most cases) or you can set up an expensive dark room at home and make your own decisions about how to process each photo depending on the look you're trying to achieve in this case.
The digital case is very similar - either you let the camera make the decision using its standard process that usually works or you take your digital negative (RAW file) and you make your own decisions based on the merits of the particular photo.

Here is the photo of the swan after I've processed it in Photoshop Camera Raw 4.0.
Processing the RAW image myself gave me the flexibility to emphasise the features of the photo that inspired me to take it in the first place.

I was able to increase the brightness by pushing up the exposure and brightness settings, then I increased the vibrance to bring out the blues of the water and the browns of the young swan's remaining baby feathers. I then pushed up the Blacks setting slightly to undo some of the effect of the increased brightness in those areas. Finally I decided to push the contrast up by quite a significant amount to bring out the texture of the water and further accentuate the colours.
Hopefully you agree that the final result is a significant improvement.

Learning how to adjust the numerous sliders in RAW processing software to produce the result you're after can take a little time but I think being able to rescue a bland photo and turn it back into the scene you remember is worth working for.

In the next post I'll be summarising the pros and cons of the RAW and JPG modes and discussing some situations where you might want to use one rather than the other.

If you have any success stories working with RAW, why not sign up to the RebelEOS flickr group and share them or just post your results in the photo pool.

Labels: JPG, RAW